Adventure Guide

Storming Portugal by Bike

Wild dogs, blood sausage, and trails cut by Visigoths? No one thinks of Portugal as a place that knocks mountain bikers to their knees, but on a big new tour with the Three Hammers…well, let's just say these people didn't attempt global domination for nothing.

todd balf

The good life in the old country: The Casas do Coro, with its plush rooms and modern pool provides a stark contrast to Marialva's ancient castle. (Francois Portman)

Rather than leave from Castelo Rodrigo on our third day, we jumped forward on the Grande Rota, continuing our clockwise mini loop to do a 30-kilometer stage from Alfaiates to Sortelha, population 800. The Pedros didn't seem as peppy as on the previous two days, maybe because Flavio had left us. Without the instigator, and with rolling, less-technical trails ahead, they seemed pleasantly uninspired. The terrain was nice, the open fields and intermittent oak forests like a sliver of Vermont. When we reached Sortelha, I was astounded to see Swarthy Pedro get off his bike and walk it up the steep village streets. One of the Pedros was actually tired.

During the day we passed through a handful of villages, detouring into a private home where a woman showed us a Jewish altar she'd found buried inside a basement wall. Just as 15th—century Portugal was rising as a world power, her Jews were going underground, only pretending to convert to Christianity to avoid Inquisitorial punishment. A few decades ago and not far from here, it was learned that a sect had been practicing Jewish rites in secret for some 500 years. Basements throughout the region, like the one we'd seen, had been used for Shabbat services.

This border country was that kind of landscape: shuttered, quiet, careful. This was where Fisher had gone missing last September. "I was worried," Bald Pedro recalled. "I was on the phone with the police when somebody called and said they'd found him." Pedro said the most disturbing part was what happened when he'd asked the sweet old ladies if they'd seen a man fitting Fisher's description ride by. Fisher was gaudily dressed, so there was no way you could miss him. But tight lips have long been part of life in the Beira Alta, as the region is known, and 500-year-old habits die hard.

Ultimately Fisher was discovered having a full meal at the behest of a man who didn't speak English. It seemed that an even older Portuguese trait had trumped the silence. "There is a long tradition of taking care of the traveler who comes to explore our country," Pedro said, "especially the ones who come alone."

The stars aligned for us perfectly on the final day. From start to finish we rode together. But there were long breaks and long talks, too. In each of the villages we passed through, Swarthy Pedro dutifully sourced out his compulsory galao caffeine fix, which led to other discoveries like yellow cake, a foot-long pork sub called a bifana and a free beer tap. For the first time since I'd been in the countryside, the skies were cloudless and we could see what fortress-living people a millennia ago had enjoyed when they weren't fending off invaders: epic views to the sunny vineyards and olive trees far below.

Along the high crumbling ramparts—at the foot of which I left my bike—I could see 360 degrees, from the Estrela to the hilly Spanish frontier. There wasn't a scrap of wind or barking dog to interrupt the reverie. Silently, a pair of ladies in black shawls wove baskets, curled like cats into a sunspot at the arched entrance.

Somewhere out there, not far really, was the stone village of Monsanto where I'd started riding on my own a few days earlier. My bike, like Swarthy Pedro's back, had succumbed to the Grande Rota punishment—it was chirping and creaking like a sick bird, and half my pulley wheel was hacked off.

In my limited time I'd finished no more than a quarter of the Grande Rota, but it was enough for now. I had seen a half-dozen living, breathing medieval villages—real places with real people. I'd met others who, like Pedro, had a vision for what these mountains, which had already seen so much, should experience next: There were eco innkeepers keeping exotic donkeys and Parisians running a tea house on an ancient mountaintop. In between these patches of innovation, I'd experienced the same dramatic landscape the Romans and Visigoths had seen, probably exactly as they saw it.